The business and culture of our digital lives, from the L.A. Times

Google founders may get their own Hollywood film

August 19, 2010 | 6:34
pm

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s leading role in the social networking revolution will soon hit movie screens. But Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page, whose idea for an Internet search engine turned them from idealistic Stanford graduate students into powerful billionaires, may not be far behind.

Michael London’s Groundswell Productions and producer John Morris have acquired the rights to make a film from journalist Ken Auletta’s book “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It” published last fall by Penguin.

"It's about these two young guys who created a company that changed the world, and how the world in turn changed them," London told Deadline New York. "The heart of the movie is their wonderful edict, 'Don't be evil.' At a certain point in the evolution of a company so big and powerful, there are a million challenges to that mandate. Can you stay true to principles like that as you become as rich and powerful as that company has become? The intention is to be sympathetic to Sergey and Larry, and hopefully the film will be as interesting as the company they created."

“The Social Network,” a film based on Ben Mezrich’s book “The Accidental Billionaires” that is due out in October, is largely fictional, according to Zuckerberg and co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. Hollywood has spiced up what would otherwise have been a much duller tale about the birth of the popular social networking site at Harvard with sex and squabbles.